An Empirical Study Of The Relationship Between Leader Behavior And Employees' Job Satisfaction In Coal Industry

In recent years, coal industry security accidents, employees'job satisfaction is an important influence factor. The relationship between leader behavior and employees'job satisfaction is an important factor for organizational outcome. Plenty of studies have indicated an intertwined relationship between leadership behavior (transactional and transformational) and employees'job satisfaction, mostly in Western culture. Coal industry is unique even compared with other domestic industry. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to explore the relationship between the leadership behavior (transactional and transformational) in coal industry in Chinese culture.Five hundred employees from Yang Mei Group Corporation Limited and Nan Mei Group Corporation Limited from Yang Quan city of ShanXi Province and Tong Mei Group Corporation Limited from Da Tong city participated in the survey study. They reported demographic information, transactional leadership, transformer leadership and job performance.The study found that, in coal industry, the contingent reward and active management-by-exception of transactional leadership was associated with higher employees'job satisfaction while passive management-by-exception was negatively associated with employees'job satisfaction. Second, the idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration of transformational leadership were associated with higher employees'job satisfaction. Third, the coal industry is different from other industries in the huge variation in employees'educational background. The study indicated that employees with high school or lower education agreed transactional leadership to a greater extent than employees with at least college education. Meanwhile, employees of college education agreed transactional leadership more than employees of university or higher education. In contrast, employees of better education agreed transformational leadership to a greater extent than employees of less education among the three levels of educational background.The findings have filled the gap in previous studies and provided insights to improve leadership behavior in coal industry.